Field of Blood

I

Terry was waiting in his car, his arm slung over the back of his seat, mock casual, watching the station door for her. She was twenty minutes late, and he looked as if he’d been there for a while. He had washed his hair and shaved, taking the shadow from his chin, making him look boyish and eager. Paddy felt her skin bristle excitedly at the sight of him. She looked away and took a deep breath as she crossed the road. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for her. She slid in next to him.

“Hiya.”

“Hiya.”

They looked at each other for a hard moment, their eyes locked.

“How’s the knee today?”

“Fine.”

They sat in silence. Terry’s hand moved forward, invisible under the dashboard, covering hers. “I had an amazing time last night.”

“Me too.”

His hand pressed on hers. “Actually, I had four amazing times last night.”

“You don’t need to boast to me, Terry. I was there.”

“I know.” He bared his teeth. “But it’s a personal best, and I can’t tell anyone else. Shall we go?”

Paddy nodded, dreading his taking away his hand, savoring the heat from the heart of his palm. He turned to face the road, put both hands on the steering wheel, and sighed contentedly.

Neither of them knew which police station to go to, nor could they recall which division had done the questioning. They drove up to the Press Bar, which was open on Sundays, a fact that Paddy had never noticed before. It opened in the afternoon, Terry explained, for the staff who were getting Monday’s edition together, and he was sure that someone there would know which station had been handling it. He drove down Albion Street slowly, with Paddy sitting low on the seat, checking for the grocery van.

A smattering of cars were arranged near the front of the car park, and the News delivery vans were parked along Albion Street, locked up and waiting for the next edition. Still concerned for her safety, Terry stopped at the door to the bar and let her climb out through the passenger door and run in while he went off and parked. She arrived breathless with nerves, an agitated face in a room of drink-softened men.

Richards was sitting alone at the bar, boring McGrade with second-hand jokes and commonplace observations. A team of three printers were sitting at a table together, relaxed, chatting just enough to keep the beer company. Dr. Pete was alone at a table near the back. In the three days since she had seen him his skin seemed to have aged a decade. He sucked in his cheeks as he drank, and the withered skin around his mouth puckered into radial lines. It was warm in the bar, but he had his overcoat pulled tight around him.

Paddy walked over. She had meant to work her way around to inquiring after his health, but it was so obviously wrong for the man to be sitting in a pub in his condition that she blurted it out.

“You look fucked.”

He smiled up at her and blinked slowly. “Fucked, is it?” he drawled, hands in pockets, pulling the tails of his coat around his thighs. “I’ll tell you fucked. Thomas Dempsie, murdered in 1973, found at Barnhill by the train station. Father Alfred Dempsie, found guilty, hanged himself, sad case, blah, blah, blah.” He smiled at her again and gave a jaunty little salute. “See, yeah? I remember you, remember what you were asking about. I remember it all.”

“Have you been here since Thursday?”

“Was it Thursday?” He seemed quite surprised and lit a fag to mark the moment.

“You’ll kill yourself in a month like this.”

“Balls to the lot of them,” he said quietly.

“Listen, was there ever mention of a grocery van being seen in the area when Thomas Dempsie went missing?”

Dr. Pete thought for a moment, blinking at his glass of beer before lifting it to his mouth and draining it. “Nut.”

“Are you sure?”

The door to the bar opened behind her and she felt a stiff breeze on her neck. The feet moved towards her and she knew it was Terry.

“Certain.”

“What about a guy called Henry Naismith, ever heard of him?”

Terry arrived at the edge of the table and Pete looked up at him.

“How are you, Pete, all right?”

Pete nodded, smiling vaguely at the wall.

“Can I get you a drink?”

Pete nodded again and Terry pointed questioningly at Paddy. She asked for lemonade and held her ground when they insisted she have something else. Her stomach couldn’t take it, she said; once a week was more than enough for her.

Terry moved off to the bar, and Pete smirked knowingly and chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. “You should watch out. A woman can’t afford to get a reputation in this business.”

“Am I not allowed friends my own age?”

“It shows. The way a man holds a woman’s eye like that- steadily, as if the whole world was just a secret between them.” It was the way he used to write- she could hear the unique tone- but instead of going on for ten paragraphs he stopped dead and looked at his glass.

Terry arrived back at the table with a packet of ten Embassy Regal and the drinks: a lemonade for Paddy, a half-pint for himself, and a half-and-half for Dr. Pete. He put down the cigarettes in front of Paddy. “That’s for last night,” he said, making her flinch in front of Pete. “What are ye talking about?”

“Whether there is a connection between Naismith and Tracy Dempsie,” said Paddy, carefully changing the subject.

Dr. Pete’s eyes were wide and wet, three degrees removed from the table. He picked up his whisky glass and threw the contents into the back of his throat, his lip curling in either disgust or pain, Paddy couldn’t quite tell. Then he lifted the half-pint of beer to see if a sip of that would help. It didn’t.

“D’you know what I’d like now?” Pete looked at Paddy and only at her. “I’d like a plate of lamb.” He dropped his head and wept into his beer.

Terry had to tap him on the elbow and repeat his name a couple of times to get his attention, and asked him for the name of the police station that was dealing with Heather’s murder. Pete told them it was Anderston station, and be sure to ask for Davie Patterson- Pete knew his father. Paddy smiled a thank-you but had no intention of asking for the squat-faced policeman. He couldn’t possibly be the only man on the investigation team.

When she looked up she found Pete watching her again.

“Henry Naismith,” he said, “was Tracy Dempsie’s first husband.”

“Her husband? The one she left for Alfred Dempsie?”

He slumped and nodded sadly at his beer. “Aye.”

II

The lobby walls were paneled in a cheap, dark veneer, which clashed with yellowing turquoise linoleum on the floor. Anderston station had twice as many chairs as the police station she had been in with McVie, three rows of five screwed to the floor.

The desk sergeant’s post was on a rostrum so high that Paddy peered over the lip like a child in a chip shop. A tired young officer in full uniform was sitting in a creaking wooden chair that protested loudly when he moved more than half an inch in either direction. It was Sunday, he informed them, no one was in today. They could talk to someone if they were prepared to wait, but he didn’t know when anyone would be available. It might be better if they phoned tomorrow.

“We’ve got some pretty important information about Heather Allen’s murder. We think we should tell someone right away,” said Terry, raised with the expectation that important people would listen to him.

The desk sergeant looked suspicious. “Heather Allen, is it?”

It was clear to Paddy that he didn’t know who they were talking about.

“Yes, Heather Allen,” said Terry. “The girl who was found in the river last weekend with her head caved in. We know something about it and we need to tell someone.”

The sergeant nodded. His chair let out a furious creak as he pointed them towards the far wall. “Go and wait over there. Someone’ll be out in a minute.”

They walked across the floor to the first set of chairs and sat down in time to see the sergeant disappear through a doorway to his right.

Two minutes later he returned, his eyebrows drawn tight with surprise, and flicked his finger at them to come over. “They’re coming straight out,” he said.

They waited for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette between them. Terry was putting it out on the floor when a door opened behind the desk sergeant. Patterson and McGovern stumbled through it looking playful and mischievous, as though they had just been having a good laugh. All roads in the Heather Allen case seemed to go through Patterson. Paddy was dismayed, and he wasn’t pleased to see her either. He balked, put out a hand to stop McGovern going to the trouble of leaving the rostrum, and called over to her.

“Ah, yeah. What do you want?”

Paddy stood up. She didn’t want to go over to him, she wanted him to come to her.

“Pete McIltchie sent me,” she said, trying to make it clear that she didn’t want to see him either. “I need to tell someone something about Heather.”

He didn’t move towards her but stood up straight, picking at a mark on the desk in front of him.

“McIltchie?”

“He told me to come and see you.”

He nodded up at her. “Is it new information?”

“Yes.” And still he stayed ten yards away, making her talk to him over the heads of Terry and the desk sergeant. She decided just to shout: “I was picked up by someone in Townhead and I found one of Heather’s hairs on a towel. The guy tried to attack me.”

Patterson nodded at the desk and glanced back at McGovern. Paddy was sure that if they had been alone, if McGovern and the desk sergeant and Terry hadn’t been there, he would have told her to piss off.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Come through to an interview room.”

McGovern followed Patterson out from behind the desk, stepping down so that they were on her level, and showed her to a double doorway at the side. Patterson pinched her upper arm firmly, as if she needed coaxing. Terry tried to follow, but McGovern put a firm hand on his chest.

“We’re not going to be long.”

Terry looked at Paddy protectively. “I’d like to stay with her.”

Patterson pursed his lips. “No,” he said firmly.

McGovern’s eyes shone triumphantly, pleased at the petty point, and Paddy took it as a bad sign.

Beyond the doors the broad corridor was paneled in the same dark wood veneer as the waiting room. The turquoise floor was stained with a yellow streak down the center. Paddy could smell tea and toast from not far away. The Sunday shift seemed like a mellow call, but it wasn’t translating into any benign feeling towards her. As they walked along the corridor in front of her, the two burly policemen’s shoulders were almost touching. Neither of them wanted to look at her.

Twenty yards down the corridor Patterson knocked briskly on a door, paused, and opened it, peering in to see if the room was empty. He flicked a finger at her. “In.”

Paddy stepped into the room, not at all certain they weren’t going to shut the door and walk away. She heard a voice in the corridor calling Patterson, a low voice asking something.

“I’ve just got someone in, sir.” Patterson’s voice sounded higher than when he spoke to her. “About Heather Allen.”

The white-haired man who had vied with McGuigan for the attention of the newsroom looked in through the door. He was wearing weekend clothes, navy slacks and a gray sweater, as stiff and formal as a uniform.

“Hello,” she said.

He looked at her duffel coat suspiciously and addressed Patterson. “Don’t take too long. I’ve got work for you.”

Patterson nodded, enjoying the implied slight to Paddy. He followed her into the room and took a seat at the table without offering her one. She sat down anyway. McGovern sat down opposite her and lit a cigarette.

“Tell me,” he said, suppressing a smile, “why do you call yourself Paddy Meehan?”

Patterson smirked next to him.

“It’s my name.”

“No, it isn’t,” said McGovern. “Your name’s Patricia Meehan. You chose to call yourself Paddy Meehan.”

She had always known her name would excite comment, that it gave her away as a Pape and marked her out at work, but she hadn’t anticipated it being regarded as a reproach by the police. The two men looked at her, enjoying her discomfort.

“I’ve always been called that. Is that why you don’t like me? Because my name’s Paddy Meehan?”

It was a mistake. She’d left herself wide open; they could fill in any number of insults now: We don’t like you because you’re fat, we don’t like you because you’re ugly. McGovern and Patterson didn’t even bother filling in the caption. They sniggered at her mistake, McGovern turning it into a laugh as he thought of a quip, Patterson losing interest, taking a deep breath, and scratching at the corner of his mouth with his fingernail.

“I’ve come here to tell you something important,” she said quietly.

Patterson nodded at the table. “Fire away, Scoop.”

McGovern tittered.

She didn’t know where to start, so she took it chronologically. She told them about the grocery van and the ice-cream van’s stops and about the smelly towel on the floor of the van and Heather’s hair and the man trying to grab her ear and sitting outside her work. She listened to herself talk and realized that it all sounded meaningless and circumstantial. McGovern asked her if the towel was still in the van, and she had to admit that she had held on to it and then lost it in the street somewhere. He picked up his cigarettes from the table, slipped the lighter into the packet, and put them in his pocket, getting ready to leave. She began to speak faster, leaving out the fact that she had given Heather’s name to several people. It was when she said the name Henry Naismith that she saw a flicker of something approaching interest.

Patterson looked at her. “Naismith?”

“He’s the man who runs the grocery van. He was Tracy Dempsie’s first husband. He could have killed Thomas and then Baby Brian.”

“He didn’t kill Baby Brian. Your cousin killed him.”

“He’s not my cousin.”

“Naismith didn’t kill Thomas Dempsie,” said Patterson certainly.

“How can you know that for sure?”

“He had an alibi. He was in the cells when that boy was killed.”

He caught Paddy’s eye, and a hot flush was just discernible on his cheeks. He had the details of the case to hand in the same way that she had old Paddy Meehan’s.

“And how would you know that?” she said quietly.

McGovern piped up to defend his friend, adding it as a throwaway fact, thinking nothing of it. “Turns out his old man worked that case.”

“The Thomas Dempsie case?”

McGovern nodded innocently. “That’s how he knows Pete McIltchie. His dad knew him from back then.”

Patterson colored a little and nodded at the table, pressing his lips tight together and raising his eyebrows. “Naismith was in the cells the night the boy was killed.”

“He’d been arrested?”

“It was just an affray. He was a senior in a gang back then, caused a lot of damage. He was broken up when that kid died. He got religion just after it, went through a big conversion.”

“He’s got a history of violence?”

“He was a street fighter at the tail end of the sixties, but he’s a nice old guy now, he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Well, he tried to hurt me.”

Patterson shook his head. “Look, we know Naismith didn’t kill anyone.”

“But Alfred Dempsie did?”

It was only an implied slight, but when she saw the reaction she wouldn’t have wanted to slag off Patterson’s dad overtly. He narrowed his mean little eyes and the red flush on his face deepened.

“You don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“I know enough.”

McGovern was watching them, a small, vacant smile on his beautiful face, not quite knowing what was going on. Patterson slid his hands back off the table, slapped it once, and clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

“So, you think Heather Allen was in the van, but you took the evidence out and lost it in the road. And now you’re sure it’s got something to do with Thomas Dempsie? What are you going to do about it?”

He looked at her intently, his eyes flicking angrily across her face. He thought she was going to write an article exposing his dad for setting up Alfred Dempsie. He must have pored over the details of the case over the years and known his dad had set Dempsie up. She could see the shame burning bright behind his eyes. She was flattered and pleased that he didn’t know she was just a copyboy.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

Suddenly Patterson was on his feet. He jerked the door open as he pulled her coat off the back of the chair and shoved it into her arms.

“Look,” she said, trying one last time. “I could have imagined the hair and him going for me, I know that, but he was waiting outside my work when I went back there last night. How would he know where I worked?”

Patterson pulled her into the corridor by the arm. “Unfortunately we can’t arrest people for parking outside your work. This thing with you and Naismith’s just a misunderstanding. Maybe you left something in his cab and he wants to return it to you or something.”

“Yeah. That’s bound to be why he’s got Heather Allen’s hair in his van, isn’t it?”

Leaving McGovern behind, Patterson led Paddy through the door to the waiting room, acting as if she had hurt his feelings. Still holding on to her arm, he pulled her across the floor, depositing her arm into the tender care of Terry.

“Don’t worry,” he told Terry. “The man in question is known to us. We’ll be having a word, telling him to lay off and stay away from her and the paper.”

“Hey! Talk to me, not him.”

Patterson turned, his face a mask of disgust. “You shouldn’t be getting into vans with men you don’t know. Old guys like Naismith are prone to get the wrong idea, and you’d have no one to blame but yourself if he did.”

He turned and walked away. The desk sergeant raised an amused eyebrow.

Terry looked at her. “I’m guessing it didn’t go that well.”

“You’d be guessing right.”

Outside the station they climbed into the car and sat staring out the windscreen for a moment, Paddy stunned, Terry patient.

“The red-faced guy there?” she said finally. “His dad investigated Thomas Dempsie. There’s no way the police will ever open that case again.”

“What if we approach Farquarson-”

“Terry,” she said, turning to him. “Listen to me. We’re nothing. McGuigan and Farquarson won’t print an article denouncing the Strathclyde police force on our say-so. “

“They won’t publish, will they?”

“They won’t publish a speculative story. We’d need definite proof. And in the meantime no one’s the slightest bit interested in searching Naismith’s van. Those wee boys are going to get the blame.”

“We can’t let this happen.”

“I know.” She looked out the window, following the path of a crisp packet across the windy road. “I know.”

III

It was always quiet on the editorial floor, but the absence of doors opening or movement through the corridors lent the air a peculiar weight. Paddy kept close to the wall, staying away from the windows as she crept along to the last door before the back stairs. Her fingers were touching the door handle before it occurred to her that the toilets might even be locked over the weekend.

The handle turned, she felt a gentle click, and the door to the ladies’ opened. With a last glance into the corridor, she stepped in. Whether she was smelling or remembering it she couldn’t quite tell, but the tang of Heather’s Anaïs Anaïs perfume caught her throat, and she had to press her eyes shut and take a deep breath before making herself move on.

The cleaners had been. The sink had been wiped down, the used towels emptied from the wire-mesh bin, and the sanitary towel bin, its top still crumpled from Heather’s weight, had been moved back into the corner of the far cubicle. Paddy bent down and ran her finger over the hollow. Naismith was going to walk, and Callum Ogilvy and the other child would lose their lives because the cleaners had been. She turned to go, catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror by the door. Her chin sloped straight into her chest. She was putting on weight. She spun away from the mirror, and her gaze landed on the floor at the back of the toilet, a stray glint causing her to stop dead. She smiled. That cleaner was a lazy cow. She had mopped the floor without sweeping it first, pushing the debris against the wall under the low cistern, convinced no one would look there between one shift and the next.

Paddy bent down a little and smiled. She could see the threads, dulled with dust particles clinging to them, but they were there: a little golden bundle of Heather Allen’s hair.

IV

Terry sat on his bed, head bent over the phone book, running his finger down the list of names while Paddy leaned against the wall and watched him. The bedsheets were creased in the middle from the night before. She didn’t want to sit down next to him, didn’t want to approach the bed or touch the sheets. With the overhead light on she could see that a fuzzy gray oval had formed in the middle where Terry slept. She could hardly believe that she had lain there the night before, her bare skin touching the grubby linen, her hands moving slowly over him, faking pleasure. She searched her soul for the crippling shame she had been warned about but couldn’t find it. She wasn’t a virgin anymore, and no one knew but her. She crossed her arms, hugging herself, and tried not to smile.

“There’s a few in Baillieston,” he said. “Three in Cumbernauld.”

“Must be a family.”

“Must be.” His eyes followed his fingers to the bottom corner of the list, and then he turned the page. “Here, H. Naismith.”

Paddy stepped quickly towards him. “Is there one there?”

“Yeah, H. Naismith, Dykemuir Street.”

She remembered the address from the mass card they had sent after Callum Ogilvy’s father died.

“That’s Callum Ogilvy’s street,” she said. “Naismith lives in bloody Barnhill.”

V

Of all the houses in the street it was the most unremarkable. Naismith’s house was modest and tidy, the curtains hung neatly. The short front garden had been paved over with red slabs that had sunk irregularly into the sand beneath, their edges sticking up and down. An empty hanging plant basket at the side of the front door swung with a mild metronomic regularity in the evening wind. The grocery van was parked proudly outside.

Twenty yards away across the road, in the incline of the hill, sat the Ogilvy house. Looking out the passenger window as they passed, Paddy could see where weeds and weather were eating through the brick in the garden wall, chewing into the FILTH OUT slogan, the weight of soil from the garden forcing the bricks to buckle out onto the pavement.

Barnhill was not the preferred residence of motorists. Terry had parked near the Ogilvys’, but his white Volkswagen was still the only car in the dark street apart from Naismith’s grocery van. They were acutely conspicuous.

“Shit. We might as well have phoned ahead to tell him we were coming.”

“I know,” said Terry, peering through the windscreen into the deserted street. He started the engine again and pulled the car out into the road, pulling off quickly as though they were going somewhere.

“What about here?” said Paddy as they passed an empty pub car park two streets away.

Terry shook his head. “That’s not safer. There’re more witnesses here.”

They passed by, and Paddy saw in the window the backs of a man and a woman sitting close in the warm amber light, their heads inclined together. They drove on, following a broad road out towards the Springburn bypass. A stretch of waste ground next to the road was dark with nothing nearby but an abandoned, boarded-up tenement building and a pavement running outside it. Terry slowed the car a little and glanced at her inquiringly.

“No, too obvious.”

He sped up, heading farther away again.

“But Terry, the farther we go from the van the farther we’ve got to walk back to it. We’re more likely to be seen.”

“Ah, you’re right.” He slowed over to the side of the road and swung the car through a sharp circle. “Let’s just do it.”

He drove down Callum Ogilvy’s road, parked the car twenty feet behind the van, and turned off the engine. He zipped up his leather jacket, tugging the toggle at the end twice, making sure it was up properly. Paddy watched him. Terry was sweating with nerves. They had agreed beforehand that this would be his job, knowing that if Naismith saw Paddy he’d go for her, but Terry was very jittery. She didn’t know if he would be able to pull it off.

“Are we sure about this?” he said, talking quickly, as if he was afraid to breathe out.

“I am. Are you?”

He nodded, looking anxiously out the window. “He was in the cells when Thomas Dempsie was killed, though.”

“He could easily have taken him earlier and hidden him. Tracy Dempsie would hardly be the most reliable person to get times from. Dr. Pete said she changed the times back and forth when they interviewed her.”

“Right.” He nodded out the window again. “You’re sure, then?”

“Terry, look where he lives: he knows Callum Ogilvy, Thomas Dempsie was his ex-wife’s wean by her new man, and his rounds are in Townhead. He must have passed Baby Brian every day. He fits in with all of it perfectly.”

“Yes,” he said, still frowning at the street.

“We’re only making them check his van. If they don’t find any other evidence, he’ll walk.”

“He’ll walk.” Terry nodded. “He’ll walk.”

“But they will find evidence. I’m sure they will. They’ll find evidence of the Wilcox baby and Heather as well, I’m sure they will.”

“You’re sure they will.” His nervous nodding grew faster and he began to rock forward slightly on his seat. “Sure they will.”

He threw open the door and stepped out into the street in one seamless move, striding towards the van with his head down. He stayed in the road, keeping the van between himself and Naismith’s front door, stepped up on the chrome-trimmed step on the driver’s side, keeping his balance by resting his belly against the door, flattening himself against the body of the cab.

Paddy was staring straight at the van, but if she hadn’t known Terry was there she wouldn’t have seen him. His elbow rose, and she saw a flash of light from the screwdriver as he pulled it from his pocket. He jacked the window down, working with the winding mechanism, emptied the contents of the green hand towel in through the window, and stepped away from the cab. Then he walked back towards her, his shoulders still up around his ears, his eyes on the ground in front of him. Paddy watched his face and saw that he was grinning.

VI

She pressed the rim of the receiver tight against her ear, wondering. Terry was watching her from the car. She was certain they were doing the right thing when she was with him, but as soon as she was alone in the call box, dialing the number for Anderston police station, she wondered if the whole idea seemed sensible only because she wanted to show off to him, acting confident of the facts the way she had acted about sex in his bed the night before. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she blurted out the story to the officer on the other end: She had seen Heather Allen on that Friday night getting into a grocery van outside the Pancake Place in Union Street; she didn’t know whose van it was, but it was purple and old and she’d seen it doing rounds in Townhead. She hung up when he asked for her name and address.

Striding back to the car, she hoped she looked as confident as Terry had when walking away from Naismith’s van.

“Is that it?”

“Done,” she said, catching her breath. “Done and done.”

Terry drove her all the way to the first leg of the Star, and she didn’t care if she was seen with him. Around the Star, front room lights were on as families settled around the telly after Songs of Praise. Terry smiled at the little houses and said he liked it.

“All the houses are facing each other, though. Don’t the neighbors all watch each other?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Paddy. “Everyone knows everything. Even the Prods know who’s skipping mass. Cheers for running me home.”

They looked at each other, a bold, bald stare, and she was dismayed to see a tiny ambivalent twitch on his chin.

“We did a good thing today, Terry.”

“I hope we did.”

They would be forever bound together by what they had done, and they both knew it.

She climbed out of the low car, regretting the fact that her fat arse was the last thing to leave his line of sight, and bent down to look at him once more. She saw him sitting in the sagging seat, his little pot belly straining through his T-shirt, saw herself lingering too long to talk, reluctant to leave his company. If Pete could see what there was between them, then other people could too. Sean would be hurt to his core.

“We’ll hear in the morning, anyway. I’ll see you then.” She withdrew and slammed the car door behind her.

She could see his face as he took the rickety car around the roundabout. He looked scared but bared his teeth in a smile as he came past. She waved back, watching the rusting backside of the car until Terry was gone.